Koneva, Klishina and Klyashtornaya Ц rock at the Russian Champs

26.07.2014

During three days of the Russian Championships in Kazan on 23-26 July there was only one European lead Ц Anna Nazarova-KlyashtornayaТs 6.93m long jump Ц but there were still a number of close battles and high quality results in other events.

Nazarova-Klyashtornaya, who took a break last season for a child birth, came back to competition strong as ever and in the qualification round she flew out to 6.93m, her second-best jump ever and the second-best mark in the world this year.

The hot favourite, double European indoor champion Darya Klishina, took it easy in qualifying but in the final she produced a season’s best of 6.90m to win her first outdoor national title. Nazarova-Klyashtornaya finished second with 6.58m to book her spot on the Russian team for the European Championships.

World indoor champion Yekaterina Koneva had a hard time in defending her national triple jump title. Alsu Murtazina leapt a season’s best of 14.50m in the first round, but Koneva responded straight away with a wind-assisted 14.84m (2.1m/s). She rounded out her series with wind-legal leaps of 14.30m, 14.40m, 14.64m and 14.58m.

World indoor silver medallist Anzhelika Sidorova improved her outdoor PB to 4.70m to win the pole vault, just one centimetre shy of the European lead currently shared by Lisa Ryzih and Ekaterina Stefanidi. Sidorova will join the newly-crowned world junior champion Alena Lutkovskaya on the team for Zurich.

Kristina Sivkova, the 17-year-old sprint prodigy, continued her amazing progress. After setting a national youth 100m record of 11.38 earlier this month, Sivkova improved on that by 0.07 to win the national title in 11.31.

That time would have been enough to win a medal at the World Junior Championships in Eugene, but she is young enough to compete at the next edition. Her main focus for this year is the European Championships.